Kara Swisher

By David A.Grogan/CNBC/NBCU/Getty Images.

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In the final episode of the first season of HBO’s Silicon Valley, Kara Swisher makes a cameo appearance—as Kara Swisher. Swisher, after all, is not just Silicon Valley’s most recognizable journalist, she is also part of its firmament. “Quite honestly, our very first choice was: ‘We’ve got to get Kara Swisher,’” said Jonathan Dotan, the technical adviser who was hired by Silicon Valley to make it really look like Silicon Valley. “She’s iconic,” he told New York magazine.

There are two reasons for Swisher’s institutional status in Silicon Valley. She’s been covering the tech sector there since the early 90s—before Mark Zuckerberg, before Sergey Brin, and before the Internet became the lifeblood of global commerce. After serving as co-executive editor of The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D vertical with Walt Mossberg, the two struck out on their own in 2014 to create Re/code, now Recode, Silicon Valley’s daily bible. (In 2015, the site was acquired by Vox Media.)

Among Silicon Valley executives, Swisher is thought to possess larger-than-life powers. Swisher told New York magazine that she heard Yahoo C.E.O. Marissa Mayer held a meeting at which she graphed the impact of Swisher’s posts on Yahoo’s stock price.